Create and play this holiday with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update coming Oct. 17

Terry Myerson

The next update of Windows 10, the Fall Creators Update, will be available worldwide October 17. With the Fall Creators Update we are introducing some fun, new ways to get creative. As part of the update we will deliver an evolution to the photos experience that will let you tell your story like never before using photos, videos, and 3D effects; enhancements in gaming, security, accessibility, and immersive new experiences made possible by Windows Mixed Reality. All of this innovation will be brought to life by a range of beautifully designed, and feature rich modern devices available from our hardware partners this holiday.

It’s great to be here in Berlin at IFA, one of the world’s oldest and largest trade shows for consumer electronics with so many of our customers and partners. Over the years, IFA has been one of the foremost destinations to see innovation and ingenuity on display. In 1930, Albert Einstein opened the 7th Great German Radio and Phonograph Show, the forerunner to today’s IFA. The 1930 exhibition marked the public debut of a prototype “television receiver”, one year before television broadcasting officially commenced in Germany. It has been an honor and a privilege to take part in this year’s exhibition.

We are coming up on our fourth major update to Windows 10, and our mission with these updates is to create a platform that inspires your creativity. We see students playing and learning with Minecraft, lawyers creating with words, accountants painting with numbers, designers sharing their ideas with slides, and engineers crafting in code. Creativity is universal and it’s aspirational in its nature.

Unleashing that creativity with new experiences, that is what propels us into the future. And for us, those experiences begin with Windows 10, the most-popular version of Windows on the planet, with over 500 million devices in homes, businesses, and schools helping you create and play.

Today, we’re pleased to announce that the next update of Windows 10, the Fall Creators Update, will be available worldwide October 17. With the Fall Creators Update, we are introducing some fun, new ways to get creative.

Windows 10 Fall Creators Update available worldwide October 17

Windows Inking

Windows Inking keeps getting better, letting you ink directly onto PDF’s, making it easier and faster to comment and share with others, improving on what you could do with pen and paper alone. Smart Ink applies artificial intelligence to inking automatically making the squares you draw more perfect, or turning boxes into a table for you with no extra work. And you know how sometimes you can’t find your keys, wallet, and phone, sometimes it’s hard to find your pen to do the inking. Windows Find my Pen fixes that in the Fall Creators Update.

Photos and Videos

We have reimagined our Photos Application to deliver remixed experiences for telling your stories with photos, videos, music, 3D, and even inking.

OneDrive Files On-Demand

You can save all of your creations in OneDrive Files On-Demand, accessing your cloud files like any of your other files on your PC, without using up your local storage space.

Gaming

The fuel that often inspires creativity is play. With the Fall Creators Update, we’ve updated Game Mode, which allows your games to use the full processing power of your device as if it was an Xbox game console, right from a new button on the Game bar. And to take advantage of this power, we have a fantastic lineup of Xbox Play Anywhere games coming including, Cuphead, Forza Motorsport 7, Super Lucky’s Tale and Middle-earth: Shadow of War. And, if you love these Xbox play anywhere games, coming on November 7 you can play them on the most powerful console on the planet, Xbox One X.

Security

While you create and play, our goal is to keep you safe and secure. With the Fall Creators Update, Windows Defender is smarter and defends better than ever before. With behind the scenes cloud intelligence that enables new defenses against ransomware and exploits. I can’t talk about security without talking about Windows 10 S. Introduced last May, Windows 10 S is specifically designed for simplicity and security, with significant breakthroughs in battery life and performance. It’s off to a great start, with some of our highest customer satisfaction results yet.

This is the core of Fall Creators Update, it’s all about unleashing your creativity and having some fun while at the same time keeping you safe and secure.

Accessibility

I also want to share some exciting new technology that speaks to our mission at Microsoft to create products which are inclusive by design. With the Fall Creators Update, we are making Windows more accessible for those with Lou Gehrig’s disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that impacts the brain’s ability to control your muscles. The one muscle it doesn’t impact, are the eyes. A new feature Eye Control implements incredible eye tracking technology that lets you type, and operate a mouse just using your eyes, this is life changing technology for those with Lou Gehrig’s disease. This is real advancement in accessibility that we are introducing to the world with the Fall Creators Update.

Windows Mixed Reality

Lastly, with the Fall Creators Update, we are enabling you to immerse yourself in a new reality, the world of Windows Mixed Reality. By combining our physical and digital worlds, we believe mixed reality is the next step in the evolution of human computing. For the first time, we are talking about a mixed reality system that fully immerses you in the experience not limited to a mobile device screen size. One that is easy to setup, not requiring you to mount cameras around the room, just put the headset on your head, plug it into your PC and get started, leaving your hands free to interact with the mixed world. It’s available from a wide range of partners around the world, like Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo with headsets starting as low as $299.

I am thrilled to announce that Windows Mixed Reality headsets will start to become available on October 17 when the Fall Creators Update ships.

And if you find yourself without a headset, we will also deliver mixed reality experiences through the PC. With Mixed Reality Viewer, you can see 3D objects – either from the Remix3D.com community or your own creation from Paint 3D – mixed into your actual surroundings through your PC’s camera – and snapped and shared – for powerful ways to tell your story.

Modern devices bring the magic of the Fall Creators Update to life

Our partners announced a range of beautifully designed, and feature rich modern devices at IFA this week including, new Windows 2-in-1s, laptops, all-in-ones, and gaming PCs that feature Intel’s latest 8th generation processors, include the latest NVIDIA graphics cards that enable Windows Mixed Reality experiences, deliver all-day battery life, offer OLED and 4K screens for the most stunning visuals and much more.

Premium PCs

Powered by up to an 8th generation Intel Core i7 processor, the super-slim Lenovo Yoga 920 2-in-1 is just what you need to create and be productive, it’s also a powerful Windows Mixed Reality PC. The Yoga 920 was designed to provide more natural and intuitive experiences and includes Far-field microphones so you can use Cortana to wake the PC, play music, set reminders and more with your voice from across the room. An optional Lenovo Active Pen with 4,096 levels of pen sensitivity makes inking easy and fun, dramatically expanding the creative and cross-application potential of the PC.

The Acer Switch 7 Black Edition is a fanless 2-in-1 notebook equipped with discrete graphics. With an 8th Generation Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics, it is an ideal companion for intensive tasks, creative production, and content streaming. Even though it’s powerful, Acer’s innovative Dual LiquidLoop technology keeps the Switch 7 cool and quiet. The Switch 7 Black Edition has an embedded battery-free stylus powered by Wacom EMR technology that features 4096 levels of pressure sensitivity and pen tilt support to control the angle, width or shading of the stroke providing users a more authentic writing and sketching experience when using Windows Ink.

Popular PCs

Designed for the person on the go or multi-user household, the new Dell Inspiron 7000 2-in-1 line, available in 13 and 15 inches in Era Gray brushed aluminum, features stunning visuals with a narrow border, a standard FHD 10-point touch IPS display and an optional premium 4K UHD IPS touch display. It offers powerful performance with new 8th Generation Intel processors, DDR4 memory; flexible connectivity options with USB Type-C with support for DisplayPort and Power Delivery, longer battery life and quieter performance with standard SSDs. Optional Dell Active Pen offers a natural feel when using Windows Ink to draw, write or take notes.

The Lenovo Miix 520 is a mainstream workhorse with the functionality and detachable form factor designed to give a firsthand taste of the many digital technologies and tools remaking the world in which we live. Powered by up to Intel’s latest 8th Gen Quad Core i7 processors with up to 16 GB of DDR4 memory and up to 1TB PCIe SSD, the Miix 520 is a powerhouse on which you can use Windows Ink to take notes or create presentations, or use the WorldView camera to capture images and edit them in 3D.

Professional PCs

HP’s ProBook 430 G4 is a rugged powerhouse designed for business people who need to be productive in the office, or out in the field. It features a battery that will last all day, has an aluminum reinforced keyboard, and keeps apps and data secure with Windows 10 Pro.

The thin and light Dell Latitude 12 7285 2-in-1 is perfect for getting work done. It is a business detachable that features an Infinity edge display, it can charge wirelessly, comes with Windows 10 Pro, and includes Windows Hello for added security.

Student PCs

The Fujitsu Lifebook P727 with Windows 10 S is a 2-in-1 designed especially for students who need a powerful and secure device on which they can use Windows Ink and the included Active Stylus to take notes, create diagrams and the keyboard to write essays and reports. A dead battery isn’t a problem because this PC’s batteries can be swapped while the PC is in Standby mode.

The blend of beauty and performance on the Surface laptop hits all the right notes without compromising the things required to keep you productive, like all-day battery life, incredible display quality, and portability. Even the Alcantara material covering the keyboard balances its elegance with a clever design that resists spills and absorption. Every detail on this product has been thought through, and this meticulous attention extends to the software as well. Surface Laptop is made for Windows 10 S and the best of Microsoft’s products and services like Office and OneDrive.

Gaming PCs

ASUS announced the ROG Chimera, a laptop with an ultra-responsive 17.3-inch FHD IPS wide-view display that features an impressive Full HD IPS anti-glare panel with G-SYNC technology for a 144Hz refresh rate and 7ms response time. Powered by the latest unlocked Intel Core i7-7820HK processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 graphics the ROG Chimera brings together the best of laptop and console gaming. It comes with built-in Xbox Wireless, so gamers can effortlessly connect their favorite Xbox accessories to the PC, without adapters, and you won’t have to swap controllers when switching between console and PC.

Windows Mixed Reality headsets

A variety of Windows Mixed Reality headsets and motion controllers will be available this holiday from Acer, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, with headsets starting as low as $299.

Acer will offer their Windows Mixed Reality Headset with motion controllers. When the headset is paired with the controllers you can take advantage of the full position and rotational tracking in the headset to easily create content or play games.

ASUS’ Windows Mixed Reality headset will be available in Spring of 2018 and will offer a unique design with a pattern of hundreds of 3D polygons and glossy tone-on-tone effect.

The Dell Visor features high resolution 1440 x 1440 LCD panels for a sharp and smooth 360° panoramic experience for an “as-if-you-are-there” view. It’s thoughtfully engineered for comfort and convenience with well-cushioned head and face padding that allow for comfortable wear, even for users who wear glasses.

The HP Windows Mixed Reality Headset will also be bundled with motion controllers to provide great Mixed Reality experiences.

The Lenovo Explorer headset is ergonomically designed and optimized for comfort so you can immerse yourself in mixed reality experiences for long periods.

All of these new devices from our partners will start to become available when the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update becomes available on October 17.

Our mission at Microsoft is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. One of the ways we’re supporting that mission is by taking this next step in our Windows journey and empowering the creator in all of us with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.

The future is before us, we’re proud to be here at IFA with our partners building the future together.